This blog is maintained by the Wenatchee School District's Instructional Technology Department to keep staff updated on tips and techniques for navigating the digital world. The content on this website in no way represents the opinions or beliefs of WSD.

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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Floors - Create Your Own Game

File this under: Wow. That's really cool. Floors is an iPad app that boys (and probably some girls too) have dreamed about all their lives. You draw your video game on graph paper, take a picture of it with your iPad camera, and it gets translated into an iPad game that you can play and share with others. Way cool. I played with it with my 6-year old daughter on a Saturday morning and in about ten minutes we had drawn a rudimentary game with a few levels that had ladders, bombs, disappearing blocks, moving floors, and a goal. It took a little bit of erasing and fine tuning but we had a great time putting it together.

The company that made this one also has plans to make an adventure quest game and a racing game too.

from the game creators web site:

Pixel Press Floors is changing the way we experience mobile games by letting anyone be the creator, publisher and player of their own video game. With our creator platform, you can literally draw your own video game - no coding required.

Imagine playing games from around the world that all began from just an idea on paper!

By recognizing the shapes (â€œglyphsâ€) you draw on paper or in the app using our â€œDraw-in-Appâ€ tools, we instantly turn your level blueprint into a game that can be tested, designed, played - and most importantly, published to the â€œArcadeâ€ where others can enjoy your level and you can track how many times itâ€™s played.

Update: After playing with this today in my class we noticed it won't let you take a picture of your level with an older iPad. My kids have iPad 2s. It works fine with my iPad Air. Their site says:

**NOTE: Compatible with iPad 2+, requires iOS 7+. We are continually working to improve the capture from paper process. Currently "Create-from-Paper" runs best on the iPad 4, iPad Air, and iPad Mini Retina, and is not supported on the iPad 2 or iPad Mini at this time. â€œDraw-in-Appâ€ is supported on all devices.**